When you were a kid, did you ever hope the future would be like The Jetsons? Well, at a middle school in Danville, Pennsylvania, the future is happening right now.
Thanks to the innovations of a Seattle-based company, Double Robotics, Maddie Rarig, a bedridden sixth grader, is able to attend class in real time, the Associated Press reports. The 11-year-old, who is recovering from a spinal injury, is connected to her classes via a robot that’s basically a iPad connected to a Segway. With a simple smartphone, Maddie can control the robot’s movements right from her bedroom.
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Incredibly, this robotized version of Maddie seamlessly interacts with her teachers and classmates and can even join group discussions. “We call the robot Maddie, because it is very much her in the classroom,” her math teacher, Shayna Heitzelman, told the wire service. “We positioned the face of the robot where she can see everything going on in front of the class. Maddie can move closer or farther away as needed. She can turn the robot around to face the class. The thing is, and this is amazing, she has this huge grin on her face, which you can see on the robot. And the kids, her friends, love it.”
Maddie’s mother, Kristin Rarig, told the AP that the robot is helping her daughter “get better faster.”
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Each of these robots costs about $2,100, not including the cost of the iPad. If this sounds a bit expensive, it’s because the technology is still quite new. But once these robots becomes more accessible, it could open a whole new slew of possibilities in the classroom. Not only would it help kids who are stuck at home due to illness or disability, but it could even be used when children can’t attend school due to inclement weather. Robots in the classroom would certainly would’ve been helpful during this particularly long and bitter winter, as it would have virtually eliminate the days school kids missed due to snow.
A world that’s like The Jetsons doesn’t seem so far off now, does it?
Tag: Pennsylvania
Can This Recreational Activity Heal Vets and Help Them Find Jobs?
There’s nothing better than the feel of the sun on your face, the smell of salt water in the air and the breeze blowing through your hair. For some veterans, hitting the open seas in a sailboat could be exactly what they need.
The Bayfront Maritime Center of Erie, Pennsylvania, already serves some veterans through its volunteer-run EASE (Erie Adaptive Sailing Experience) program, but now it’s ramping up its efforts to reach out to even more through its new Veterans EASE program. Bayfront Maritime Center Executive Director Rich Eisenberg told Ron Leonardi of the Erie Times-News that they will partner with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the VA Hospital in Erie, to provide healing experiences to former service members.
Only 40 percent of returning veterans in the Erie area make appointments with counselors, and of those that do, only 40 percent return for a follow-up visit. Eisenberg thinks that sailing could prove more therapeutic for veterans than a visit to a counselor’s office, especially given the success of a similar program, Veterans On Deck, in Charleston, South Carolina. Veterans EASE will feature year-round programs that focus on not only sailing, but also boat maintenance and building activities.
The center also plans on helping participants find employment, too. “Right now, there’s a 20 percent shortage of skilled workers in the maritime industry,” Eisenberg told Leonardi. “That’s projected by the U.S. Coast Guard to go to 35 percent in 10 years, because a lot of the personnel are retiring. These are excellent, high-paying jobs, and veterans are well positioned to be filling these positions because of all their military training.”
Sounds like a day of sailing could lead to a full-fledged job for some Pennsylvania veterans.
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This Generous Photographer Makes Low-Income Families Smile
Many of us parents have enough photos of our kids to paper our walls five times over. But for low-income families, having professional portraits taken of their children typically is not even an option. So that’s where Sheila Hudson comes in.
While volunteering at Abington Hospital (located in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia), Hudson, a photographer, realized these families might lack of pictures. “Since photography is kind of a hobby of mine, I thought these parents would probably appreciate having no-cost portraits done of their babies,” she told Ukee Washington of CBS Philly.
So Hudson set up a portrait session at the Montgomery County’s Nurse-Family Partnership, an organization that works with first-time moms, visiting them when they are pregnant until their children are two years old, providing mentorship and parenting education. She calls her photography project “Giving Smiles.” With each session, parents leave with $200 worth of prints, a framed portrait, and digital picture files. “We’re trying to promote healthy moms and families,” Susan Vukovich of the Nurse-Family Partnership told Washington. “Photos of the baby are a nice family memento and help to reinforce that bond.”
Hudson spends about $40 per session on equipment and supplies and in order to fund her work, she accepts donations to sponsor one, two, or three “smiles.” Hudson also partners with the Maternity Care Coalition to reach low-income parents like Stephanie Major, whose nine-month-old Marcellus enjoyed a recent photo sessions. “We’ll be able to remember him forever at this age, which is so fun, and it’s going so fast already,” Major said.
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How All These Snowstorms Could Make for Better Roads and Cities
Public planners studying street traffic patterns have long known that the wider the street, the more likely drivers are to speed and drive recklessly. This winter, many of them are tweeting photos of the patterns cars have left in the snow, revealing spaces where sidewalks could be widened, making it easier for pedestrians to cross the street and enhancing driver safety. The patterns are called “sneckdowns”—a combination of the words “snowy” and “neckdowns,” curb extensions that can calm traffic.
The piles of snow are keeping drivers from attempting aggressive passing maneuvers, just as wider sidewalks would if they were built. Planners in favor of these curb extensions point to the photos to show that drivers aren’t using these swaths of street anyway, so why not widen the sidewalk there? In other words, these annoying snowstorms are creating a free way to study traffic patterns to guide future street planning.
Philadelphia has already implemented this idea, widening sidewalks based on snow patterns in 2011. Prema Gupta, the director of planning for Philly’s University City District, told Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog USA that snow pattern photos “quickly made the case that there’s right-sizing to do here. For us it was just a really compelling way of showing there was way too much street and not nearly enough place for people.” So these relentless snowstorms that have made much of the country difficult to traverse this winter just might help everyone’s commute become easier in the future.
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When People Said Minorities Weren’t Interested in Science, This Guy Proved Them Wrong
When physicist and engineer Stephen Cox first began encouraging minority students to study science and technology more than two decades ago, he faced plenty of doubters. “Many of the people just refused to believe that people of color can be involved in science and technology at this level,” Cox told Matt Erikson of Drexel University. But Cox proved them wrong through fifteen years of work as the director of the Greater Philadelphia Region Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), an organization that brings together the resources of nine Philadelphia-area universities to provide outreach, mentoring, and encouragement for African American, Latino, and Native American students to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The National Science Foundation-funded LSAMP has plenty to boast about, helping students earn 12,000 degrees in STEM fields since 1994, with 350 those being PhDs. According to LSAMP’s website, students nurtured by the organization earn more than 500 bachelor’s degrees each year. Cox believes part of the secret is recruiting students early in high school and encouraging them to take lab classes during their freshman year. LSAMP also focuses on introducing minority students to careers they might never have heard of. For his tireless work, Cox will receive the College-Level Promotion of Education award at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards in Washington, D.C. next month. Cox told Erikson, “The award thing is not as important to me. My reward is seeing students walk across the stage, dispelling any previous misconceptions.”
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She Went From Hero to Homeless. Now This Simple Government Program Is Helping Her Get Her Life on Track
Even heroes need help sometimes. When Philadelphia’s Megan Bergbauer finished her service in the Marine Corps, she discovered that her skills as a field radio operator didn’t translate to the civilian job market. With no way to afford a home, the young mother was forced to sleep in her car or stay in shelters until the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center in West Philadelphia came to the rescue, part of its “housing first” approach to helping homeless vets.
Researchers at the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, a government think tank in Philadelphia, have been studying how to fight homelessness among veterans, and here’s what they’ve found: providing vets with a place to live before connecting them with caseworkers, psychological counselors and employment advisers yields the best results. Some vets need assistance for the long haul, while others are able to bounce back on their feet after only a few months of rent assistance. But housing is key because it provides stability while vets get back on their feet. The VA will help 80,000 veterans nationwide with “rapid rehousing” this year, and 60,000 more will receive rental subsidies.
For Bergbauer, getting a VA rental subsidy made all the difference. She now lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her daughter and newborn son, and plans to resume studying forensic science at Drexel University in the future. “I definitely needed the help,” she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I would have been in deeper trouble.”
Think You Can’t Afford To Give? These Inspirational Immigrants Will Change Your Mind
Sometimes people with the least to give are the most generous. In Pittsburgh, a group of about 90 former refugees banded together over the holidays to donate hundreds of necessities for new refugees. The group — most of whom had arrived in the U.S. over the last several years from Turkey, Bhutan, South Sudan and Thailand — are all students participating in the Greater Pittsburgh Literary Council’s English language classes. They first started giving back about three years ago, when their program services manager, Many Ly, saw a poster seeking donations for military families and decided to implement the idea with the ESL students. Ly thought that sort of cause would teach the students to help others the way they’d been helped when they first arrived in America.The donations were small at first: pens and pencils, a handful of peanuts and a $1 bill. But after the first year of giving, the ESL instructors began teaching their students about poverty in America. They now give caches of household goods, toys and clothes. Tulasha Rimal, 45, who came to the U.S. from Bhutan four years ago, told Stephanie Hacke of Trib Total Media, “I came to the United States. It’s home now. It’s important to help others. … I understand now. Now I help new people.”
These Dogs Know How to Serve Their Masters and Their Country
A Pennsylvania program called Dog T.A.G.S. is helping veterans suffering from PTSD train their own pets as service animals to help them feel more at ease navigating crowds and being out in public. The acronym stands for Train, Assist, Guide and Serve, and the dogs, ranging from poodles to springer spaniels, each wear a service vest made out of the camouflage fatigues of its veteran owner. Kim Maugans and other volunteers started Dog T.A.G.S. in 2012, realizing that most veterans wouldn’t be able to pay thousands of dollars for a specially trained service dog. It takes a special animal to help some veterans heal.
This Innovative Philadelphia School Has a Really Good Reason for Downgrading Its Computers
Philadelphia’s award-winning Science Leadership Academy is making a big switch: from $1,500 Mac laptops to the $300 Chromebook 11. The new, inexpensive laptops run on Google’s Chrome operating system, support web applications, and store user information in the cloud rather than locally. The education market still favors Macs, but SLA’s principal, Christopher Lehmann, points out that the Chromebooks can make a long-time dream of ed-tech proponents — the 1-to-1 model where schools have a device for every student — come true. Dell is helping to fund the computers for the school’s two campuses, and will help SLA to create a “center of excellence” to promote the school’s inquiry-driven and project-based approach to learning. Check out the video by Lehmann to learn about the school’s vision for using Chromebooks to enable students to create their own learning experiences.
How $5 and a Plate of Spaghetti Can Change a City
There’s a lot of money in the crowdfunding world. And MealTics is looking to move some of that support into hungry communities that need a financial boost. They’ve combined the crowdfunding model with traditional fundraising to build an opportunity for people to easily turn meals from their favorite local restaurants into donations for local shelters and soup kitchens. Their current campaign to raise 5,000 spaghetti dinners from Rino’s Restaurant, outside Philadelphia, takes just a $5 donation from diners, and it’s starting to catch on.